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But how account, at this, for its extension over all the
heavens and all living beings?
There is no such extension. Sense-perception, by insistence upon
which we doubt, tells of Here and There; but reason certifies
that the Here and There do not attach to that principle; the
extended has participated in that kosmos of life which itself has
no extension.
Clearly no participant can participate in itself;
self-participation would be merely identity. Body, then, as
participant does not participate in body; body it has; its
participation must be in what is not body. So too magnitude does
not participate in magnitude; it has it: not even in addition of
quantity does the initial magnitude participate in magnitude: the
two cubits do not themselves become three cubits; what occurs is
that an object totalling to a certain quantity now totals to
another: for magnitude to participate in magnitude the actual two
cubits must themselves become the new three [which cannot occur].
If, then, the divided and quantitatively extended is to
participate in another Kind, is to have any sort of
participation, it can participate only in something undivided,
unextended, wholly outside of quantity. Therefore, that which is
to be introduced by the participation must enter as itself an
omnipresent indivisible.
This indivisibility must, of course, not be taken in any sense of
littleness: littleness would be still divisible, could not cover
the extension of the participant and could not maintain integral
presence against that expansion. Nor is it the indivisibility of
a geometric point: the participant mass is no single point but
includes an infinity of points; so that on the theory this
principle must be an infinity of points, not a simultaneous
entire, and so, again, will fail to cover the participant.
If, then, the participant mass in its entirety is to contain that
principle entire, the universe must hold that one soul present at
its every point.
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